APWU members march outside the Eagan Post Office during a nationwide day of action.
EAGAN – Twin Cities postal workers rallied today to raise awareness about threats to Minnesotans’ mail service coming out of Washington, D.C.
Joining a nationwide “Protect Our Public Post Office Day of Action,” local members of the American Postal Workers Union demonstrated outside the U.S. Postal Service distribution center in Eagan, along busy Lexington Avenue.
Union members warned of multiple threats to mail service, including President Donald Trump’s latest nominees to the USPS Board of Governors and the president’s increasingly aggressive attempts to curb mail-in voting.
“This is a critical time for the USPS, and we need leaders at the top who understand this important institution and are committed to public service,” Dave Cook, president of the APWU’s St. Paul local, said.
The Senate is likely to vote soon on four nominees to the Board of Governors who, union members say, are unqualified to oversee the agency, particularly at a time when it is under financial pressure and attempting to modernize.
Not only do the nominees lack experience with the post office or the logistics and delivery industry, but all four are Republicans, prompting concerns from Senate Democrats that Trump may be looking to consolidate his power over a historically bipartisan board.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) aired those concerns in a letter to GOP leadership earlier this month, warning that an “imbalance in representation would be unprecedented and would undermine public confidence in the Board’s ability to serve the public interest above any partisan political aims.”
At the rally, APWU members urged Minnesota’s senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, to vote against Trump’s nominees. Cook said he worries that the administration’s ultimate aim is greater privatization of the Postal Service.
“The deck is being stacked against us politically,” Cook said. “If we keep getting leaders who want to privatize it, then that’s the way it’s going to go. They will take the services that we provide, jack up the prices and make big profits.”
Supporters of privatization point to the Postal Service’s financial woes, and the agency – which operates without taxpayer support – recently leveraged its retiree-benefit funds to cover operating costs.
Workers say a better approach would be to allow the USPS to diversify its pension investments, limited by law to U.S. Treasury securities, to seek higher yields. The alternative, Cook said, is cutting hours and services at postal counters, raising prices for mail and packages and closing post offices.
“We are not a business,” he said. “We are not designed to run as a business. And trying to run us as a business is a big part of what’s gone wrong.”
Workers also blasted efforts by Trump and some congressional Republicans to undermine public trust in voting by mail. Despite voting by mail himself, Trump has long spread misinformation and debunked conspiracy theories that connect voting by mail to election fraud.
Passing the SAVE America Act, which would limit mail-in voting, has become the administration’s top legislative priority. And Trump signed an executive order in March – since tied up in a legal challenge – that creates roadblocks for mail-in voters and seeks to expand federal access to states’ voter information.
Cook said USPS employees consider mail-in balloting a “core service that week provide” and one that is growing in popularity locally and nationally.
“Every postal worker takes pride in serving postal customers and we clearly have a stake in protecting the USPS, but we’re not in this alone, everyone has a stake in what happens to the USPS in coming weeks,” said Cook. “We need people to reach out to their members of Congress, regardless of what side of the aisle they are on.”
The APWU represents about 200,000 postal employees nationwide.
– Michael Moore, UA editor
Union Advocate 
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